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thisbluespiritWe just left the EU. I didn't think it would really happen when it came to it. The thing is, regardless of what rational reasons there might be to vote Leave (because life and politics is always complex, regardless of where I stand in them), this campaign wasn't run on them; we didn't hear any of them - it was run from start to finish on pure hate for all 'foreigners'. And 72% of Britons came out and voted, 48% Remain, 52% Leave. And a good portion of the Remain vote was Scotland alone, so England (and sadly even Wales) is even more proportionally to blame.
My country is a xenophobic, racist country. It's official. We voted Leave because we have an island mentality and we hate the rest of Europe and all immigrants. It would be lovely to think it was at least for other reasons, but that's not what the Leave campaign was about, so I don't have the luxury of clinging to illusions . I'd really, really have liked to believe that the Leave people were a noisy unpleasant minority, but they're not. They're at least half of us and so we'd risk economic collapse, all for hate, misplaced blame and flag-waving. (But, Europe, nearly half of us don't hate you. What can we say?)
What the practical fall-out will be, who knows. It looks like we're set for more recession at least in the short term and possibly Boris Johnson as PM by October. I just hope, the political climate being what it is, none of the rest of these right-wingers in Europe feel inclined to follow our example. The world needs the other countries to at least try and be better than us. It shouldn't be too difficult right now.
My country is a xenophobic, racist country. It's official. We voted Leave because we have an island mentality and we hate the rest of Europe and all immigrants. It would be lovely to think it was at least for other reasons, but that's not what the Leave campaign was about, so I don't have the luxury of clinging to illusions . I'd really, really have liked to believe that the Leave people were a noisy unpleasant minority, but they're not. They're at least half of us and so we'd risk economic collapse, all for hate, misplaced blame and flag-waving. (But, Europe, nearly half of us don't hate you. What can we say?)
What the practical fall-out will be, who knows. It looks like we're set for more recession at least in the short term and possibly Boris Johnson as PM by October. I just hope, the political climate being what it is, none of the rest of these right-wingers in Europe feel inclined to follow our example. The world needs the other countries to at least try and be better than us. It shouldn't be too difficult right now.
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Date: 24 Jun 2016 08:13 pm (UTC)I guess the reason I'm a little more optimistic is that I'm aware of the reasons why people around here voted out, and it's not (predominately) xenophobic, but admittedly that's hardly a nationwide sample. But yeah, I'm seeing comments from good people today who are afraid now in a way that they haven't been before, just because they weren't born in this country, or because they aren't white. And I don't know what to say to them.
Mind you, within twelve hours of the result being announced, the Leave lot were saying "Whoops! Mistake!" about the £350M thing, and saying that immigration won't go down. So goodness knows what all the Leave voters are thinking right now.
PS: Saw this on Twitter, and it amused me. Good to have something to smile about: https://twitter.com/NicholasPegg/status/746061996089577472